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As Gooch Street in Birmingham figured quiet significantly in the Teiger family, I thought I would find out what information I could about the area and the people who lived there. The family seem to have started out living at 82 before moving to 81 Gooch Street where they were in residence for a very long time.

I’ve searched the British News Archive website of fabulous old newspapers for any mentions of Gooch Street through the ages. There were quite a few so the below are “just a taster” of the people and their lives in Gooch Street.

Now you may think that Gooch Street was rife with crime and unhappy events after reading these clippings but, newspapers being newspapers, they would have published stories that gained them more readers and sold more newspapers!

I also came across these interesting photographs of Gooch Street on the Digital Balsall Heath website and Chris very kindly said I could reproduce them. Take a look at their website, they have lots more photos. (Source: Balsall Heath Local History Society; Sutton, Chris)

1955 – View looking towards the junction with Conybere Street. Woolworths is in centre foreground and then the long white building is The Triangle cinema. Conybere Street is the just visible right turn after the cinema.

1963 – Moyle & Adams’ grocers to the centre of the photograph. Left of them is Kingston’s butchers.To the right is Gerald’s fruit and flowers. The roadside gutter is packed with swept up ice and slush from a snowfall.

1910-1940 – Shop on the corner at the centre of the picture is Samuel Thornley Ltd. est. 1794 Wholesale Drysalters and makers of French Polish, Varnish and Lacquer. The shop beneath (also Samuel Thornley) advertises “Motor Oils, Grease & Cotton Wast”. Further down the street is Balsall Timber & Joinery Ltd.

13th August 1942

19th November 1940

Bomb damage in Gooch Street near the bridge over the River Rea in Highgate, 1942

This pub is on the corner of Bissell Street. General Sir Charles James Napier,(August, 10, 1782 – August 29, 1853), was a general of the British Empire and the British Army’s Commander-in-Chief in India, notable for conquering the Sindh Province in what is now Pakistan.

The Triangle Cinema, on the corner of Conybere Street and Gooch Street, was originally known as Pringle’s Palace as it was owned by Ralph Pringle, a pioneer of the cinema trade. This view shows the Triangle in 1957.Bernard Jackson talks about The Triangle:“The Triangle had the best acoustics of any cinema they had and they tried to build them like it and they couldn’t. It was a complete triangle but there was one lot of seats top to bottom. You could roll a ball or bottle down. During the week the women would come out the pub, go into the cinema and have a sup then put the bottle on the floor. I paid two jam jars to get in”.

It still amazes me today how much information is out there on the internet if you have the time to look.